There is absolutely no need to make your own butter at home.
Shop bought butter is absolute fine – a marvel of dairy brilliance, if you ask me – and is there, rectangle and modestly golden, ready to be scraped across hot toast whenever you need it.
Yet here I am, asking you to whisk away at cream like we’re in the 1800s. And why? Because it’s nice.
It’s just nice!!
It’s nice to make your own butter sometimes. Not at all the time, just sometimes. When you have a tub of double cream that’s threatening it’s own life, then you have the skill and wherewithal to turn it into something extraordinary, something better than what you could get at the shop. Does that mean you replace this with the one you could buy at the shop? Absolutely not. But I like knowing that I can.
It’s simple, resourceful and delicious and sometimes when it comes to food, cooking, and eating – that’s really all I need a recipe to be. Plus, if you’re going to hold a whisk for about 10 minutes, you might as well have some damn butter at the end of it which tastes like burnished leeks and campfire smokiness, that’s all I’m saying.
Let’s talk flavours.
Of course, the rich, creamy balm of regular butter is present here, but the leeks, which are almost caramel-sweet, paired with the smoky crunch of smoked salt create a layered nuance that you will want to introduce to everything. I, myself, like it just simply spread on toast where the butter folds itself and melts into the soft bread leaving only the frazzled remains of leek on the surface. but put it in mashed potatoes, on a steak, stir it through pasta – it’s an absolute game changer.
So no, you don’t need to make butter at home. But once you’ve made and tasted this, you’ll understand why you should.
Makes BUTTER… enough for how many, I don’t know. Depends how much butter you like to use, but in terms of grams, the below makes just over 200g butter.
2 leeks
1 tbs olive oil
600ml double cream
1 tsp smoked sea salt flakes
- Trim and wash the leeks because they are so deceptively filthy, I can’t cope. I do this by slicing the leek into little pound coins, putting them in a bowl and covering in water, using my fingers to push the leek coins out into little thimble shapes. Drain the water, and then pat them dry in a clean tea towel or with some kitchen paper.
- Warm the olive oil in a frying pan on a medium-low heat and add the now-oddly shaped leeks to the pan and cook for about 20 – 40 minutes, stirring just every now and then. You want the leeks to catch in certain areas, but if you feel the leeks are catching too quickly, you can add a tiny splash of water to the pan to cool it down, and using a spoon, you can deglaze the pan. When the leeks are soft and golden, take the pan of the heat and leave to one side.
- For the butter itself, pour the double cream into a big bowl. Using an electric whisk (or a whisk and a very enthusiastic arm) slowly whisk the cream. Keep going. Don’t stop. You want to over-whisk it. Soon you’ll start to see the cream take on more body and the texture will start to thicken and get granular, so now turn up the motor on the whisk (or the enthusiasm in your arm) and thicken it further.
- Soon the cream will start to separate into two things – a thick bundle of yellowy solids, and a thin puddle of watery milk. It will splash around a little, and this is a good thing. When the yellow solids have clumped together to create what looks like butter (which it is) you can stop.
- Pop some muslin or cheese cloth over a bowl and using a spoon, put the butter into it. I’m torn between telling you this is an absolutely necessary step. Professionals would say yes, but I often stop here and just carry on with the butter however, that butter is packed with a lot more of that watery milk, otherwise known as buttermilk, and I have so many other plans for that light, sweet, liquid. So annoying as it may seem, I do want every bit of it.
- So through the muslin and using my hands, I squeeze out the buttermilk into the bowl until the butter feels tight and compact in the fabric. I add this buttermilk (and all the buttermilk from the original bowl) into a glass jar and keep in the fridge. Better cooks would ask you to hang the muslin for long periods of time. I won’t.
- To the newly formed block of butter (which you must annoyingly scrape from the muslin, but the buttermilk is worth it, I promise) I stir through the caramelised leeks and the smoked salt butter, mixing to combine. Again, a better cook would tell you to put this into some baking parchment to shape into a cute block that you can tie with string. I just scrape the whole thing into a Tupperware box and keep in the fridge for whenever I need it. I usually keep butter in the cupboard, but I want this to last as long as possible, so the fridge it is.
- Spread it on toast, shove it under a chicken skin, melt it on to a steak, mix it with some hot honey and pour it over some lamb shanks. I can’t recommend it enough.
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 